Monty Python's Flying Circus -
"Four Yorkshiremen"
[ from the album Live At Drury Lane, 1974 ]
The Players:
Michael Palin - First Yorkshireman;
Graham Chapman - Second Yorkshireman;
Terry Jones - Third Yorkshireman;
Eric Idle - Fourth Yorkshireman;
The Scene:
Four well-dressed men are sitting together at a vacation resort.
'Farewell to Thee' is played in the background on Hawaiian guitar.
------------------------------------------------------------------
FIRST YORKSHIREMAN:
Aye, very passable, that, very passable bit of risotto.
SECOND YORKSHIREMAN:
Nothing like a good glass of Chβteau de Chasselas, eh, Josiah?
THIRD YORKSHIREMAN:
You're right there, Obadiah.
FOURTH YORKSHIREMAN:
Who'd have thought thirty year ago we'd all be sittin' here
drinking Chβteau de Chasselas, eh?
FIRST YORKSHIREMAN:
In them days we was glad to have the price of a cup o' tea.
SECOND YORKSHIREMAN:
A cup o' cold tea.
FOURTH YORKSHIREMAN:
Without milk or sugar.
THIRD YORKSHIREMAN:
Or tea.
FIRST YORKSHIREMAN:
In a cracked cup, an' all.
FOURTH YORKSHIREMAN:
Oh, we never had a cup. We used to have to drink out of
a rolled up newspaper.
SECOND YORKSHIREMAN:
The best we could manage was to suck on a piece of damp cloth.
THIRD YORKSHIREMAN:
But you know, we were happy in those days, though we were poor.
FIRST YORKSHIREMAN:
Because we were poor. My old Dad used to say to me, "Money
doesn't buy you happiness, son".
FOURTH YORKSHIREMAN:
Aye, 'e was right.
FIRST YORKSHIREMAN:
Aye, 'e was.
FOURTH YORKSHIREMAN:
I was happier then and I had nothin'. We used to live in
this tiny old house with great big holes in the roof.
SECOND YORKSHIREMAN:
House! You were lucky to live in a house! We used to live
in one room, all twenty-six of us, no furniture, 'alf the floor
was missing, and we were all 'uddled together in one corner
for fear of falling.
THIRD YORKSHIREMAN:
Eh, you were lucky to have a room! We used to have to live
in t' corridor!
FIRST YORKSHIREMAN:
Oh, we used to dream of livin' in a corridor! Would ha'
been a palace to us. We used to live in an old water tank
on a rubbish tip. We got woke up every morning by having
a load of rotting fish dumped all over us! House? Huh.
FOURTH YORKSHIREMAN:
Well, when I say 'house' it was only a hole in the ground
covered by a sheet of tarpaulin, but it was a house to us.
SECOND YORKSHIREMAN:
We were evicted from our 'ole in the ground; we 'ad to go
and live in a lake.
THIRD YORKSHIREMAN:
You were lucky to have a lake! There were a hundred and
fifty of us living in t' shoebox in t' middle o' road.
FIRST YORKSHIREMAN:
Cardboard box?
THIRD YORKSHIREMAN:
Aye.
FIRST YORKSHIREMAN:
You were lucky. We lived for three months in a paper bag
in a septic tank. We used to have to get up at six in the
morning, clean the paper bag, eat a crust of stale bread,
go to work down t' mill, fourteen hours a day, week-in
week-out, for sixpence a week, and when we got home
our Dad would thrash us to sleep wi' his belt.
SECOND YORKSHIREMAN:
Luxury. We used to have to get out of the lake at six o'clock
in the morning, clean the lake, eat a handful of 'ot gravel,
work twenty hour day at mill for tuppence a month, come home,
and Dad would thrash us to sleep with a broken bottle,
if we were lucky!
THIRD YORKSHIREMAN:
Well, of course, we had it tough. We used to 'ave to get up
out of shoebox at twelve o'clock at night and lick road clean
wit' tongue. We had two bits of cold gravel, worked twenty-four
hours a day at mill for sixpence every four years, and when
we got home our Dad would slice us in two wit' bread knife.
FOURTH YORKSHIREMAN:
Right. I had to get up in the morning at ten o'clock at night
half an hour before I went to bed, drink a cup of sulphuric acid,
work twenty-nine hours a day down mill, and pay mill owner for
permission to come to work, and when we got home, our Dad
and our mother would kill us and dance about on our graves
singing Hallelujah.
FIRST YORKSHIREMAN:
And you try and tell the young people of today that ..... they
won't believe you.
ALL:
They won't!

It is an 81 with probably over 500,000 miles on it. I try to keep it in good
operating order. (Has recently rebuilt engine, etc.) Actually I was just
about to take it into the shop to have the front end worked on....

on
a
the
He
then
(long
turn
much).
truck
I was thinking along those same lines while reading the OP.
Amazing that anyone should still be driving a vehicle without doing regular
maintenance and would not have repaired a worn tie rod long before it fell
off.
I'm going to file this one along with the posts about people who never check
their furnaces then post here asking for help that it does not work and the
temp is now -40 degrees in the house. Or those that post that their bathtubs
just fell through the rotted out floor after water was leaking through a
wall for the last decade.
AMUN

Always the sideline quarterbacks who say stuff like this. FYI, a
beater or farm truck is just that - an old truck that one has nothing
invested in that he beats around the woods in, hauling rocks, hay,
feed, firewood and the like. Maintenance consists of fixing stuff when
it breaks, and then only enough to keep it running.
Only a fool would spend the money to say, rebuild the front end, when
the whole truck might be worth $100 and could be replaced for another
$100. Fix what breaks and use the thing til too many things break too
often, then drop it off at the wrecking yard and find another one.
John

regular
fell
I know full well what a "beater" is and have owned several in my lifetime.
But tie rods don't just fall off without ANY warning.
You will already have problems steering long before sudden failure occurs
I was advised long ago, you can't get into problems with 2 tons of metal
that won't start or go.
But you can get into one heck of a lot of problems when it won't stop.
the engine can belch smoke, the trans may howl or not go into a gear or
two, and the fenders may flap in the breeze
But dammit, the brakes and steering are no place to save a few bucks.
You may not give a rat's ass about yourself, but it's always the innocent
ones that get hit head on by people who saved a few bucks/
AMUN

Well, I guess in this case to somewhat give him a "piss off" message,
and somewhat to express some sort of support for the guy who came up
with a damn good solution to a problem, on the fly, and sharing it with
us.

Especially tie-rod ends, when you bounce over rough ground, like at the
edge of a track.
Now, if you could drop then out in the carpark of your local parts store
and x-ray them inside for 50c, then I'm sure that they'd get replaced
more often. (I hate steering gear.)
....Brock.

I held temporarily held a muffler up in my vette when a bolt for the
hanger fell out and was lost. I used dental floss!!!! It's incredibly
strong. Held in normal driving for 20 miles until I could get home.

I think it is a brilliant post... Bill... ignore the judgemental
jackasses who feel the need to constantly lecture those of us who don't
worship the God of preventive mainenance..
Hey.. when it breaks I fix it... It works for me.. .life is a little
more fun that way.

We used to call things like that works doughnuts ("Works, don't it?).
In my days as a provider of roadside assistance on the toll road I was fond of
using hose clamps and Quaker State oil cans (which were still made of metal at
that time) as exhaust pipe repair parts. Duro made an epoxy putty that came as
a blue strip next to a yellow strip (mix until smooth green) which could patch
small holes in gas tanks. One of my fellow workers claimed to have used a
woman's panty hose as a fan-belt but I think that was a tall story because we
got extra credit for selling belts and hoses even if it meant an extra trip back
to the service station to get the necessary part. But no one could do anything
with the kid who had borrowed his holder brother's muscle car and had it break
down. When Greg got there the kid was holding a piece of connecting rod and he
said "This fell out of the bottom. Can you put it back?" Greg took the air
cleaner cover off and made a show of trying to put it back down through the
carburetor. Then he called the tow truck.

--
"Labor is prior to, and independent of, capital.
Capital is the fruit of labor and could not exist

I'd be more skeptical of anyone who claims to know what God will or
won't forgive than of someone who says they drove a few miles with a tie
rod held in place by a shoelace. Who would make up such a story? The
forces on a tie rod aren't exceptional with gentle driving.
I believe the story especially in light of memories of cars I
semi-maintained in my college days. I'm probably the only person to ever
to put a Willies flat head jeep engine and transmission into an Austin
Healey Sprite and did it in the dorm parking lot. It cost me $30
including the wrecked jeep. I made the brackets in the physics
department machine shop. Drove it for nearly a year afterwards.

None of them surpise me at all. I had a '72 Chevy Impala I drove for a
month with the drive shaft vibrating so bad I couldn't go over 30 mph. The
damn thing fell out one day as I was going over the railroad tracks at all
of 10 mph. I had a '72 Buick Skylark I drove for a full six months with no
reverse. You just had to be careful where you parked. I had a '74 Dodge
van that had side pipes and the exhaust actually passed inspection with beer
can/hose clamp repairs.
When I was married to my first husband we had a farm truck the steering was
so loose there was at least 6 inches play in the steering wheel. You
honestly didn't drive that truck, you herded it. I have no idea what year
that truck was but I'd be surprised if it was newer than about '60.
Kathy

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